


white knuckles

by philseye



Series: dan & phil & baby [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Babies, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, parent!phan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-11-29 01:29:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18216371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philseye/pseuds/philseye
Summary: their four-month-old baby is sick and they're flustered new parents





	white knuckles

He’s stood at the kitchen counter scooping formula into a bottle the first time he hears it. The sound is caught somewhere between a grunt and a cough that shifts suddenly to whimpering. If it wasn’t the early hours of the morning and there wasn’t complete stillness inside their home, he doubts he would have even heard it. 

He rushes back to their bedroom, still shaking the baby bottle to mix the formula, and peers over the bassinet where Emma lays crying and tightly clenching her fists.

“Are you hungry?” Phil whispers to her as if she could answer him. “I have food.” 

Dan shuffles in the bed next to him and pulls the covers up over his head to block the sunshine that is now beaming through their bedroom window. Four months down the line and they still have the same routine of Phil caring for the baby in the early hours while Dan sleeps in. Phil would never admit to it, but he’s become quite the morning person.

He picks Emma up from her bassinet and cradles her against his chest as he crosses the bedroom to where the rocking chair sits. He sits down and rearranges a bit until her head is in the crook of his arm and his other arm is underneath her to support her weight. She looks up at him with her big blue eyes blown wide as he pushes the nipple of the bottle into her mouth. Almost immediately, she starts crying against it and kicks her tiny socked feet against Phil’s arm. His eyebrows are knit as he removes the bottle from her mouth.

He rocks her for a few minutes, considering that perhaps she’s fussy and needs a second to calm down before she eats, but that too does little to ease the wailing. Her hands are still balled up into fists and the sounds coming from her are getting louder and louder.

“She ok?” Dan mumbles from the bed. 

“Mmh,” Phil grunts. “Not sure what’s wrong, m’gonna check her nappy.”

He’s not panicking—she’s fine, she’s just fussy today, he reasons. A half attempt at reassuring himself. Maybe she’s tired.

“Are you grumpy with me?” Phil asks her when she’s laid flat against the changing table. 

He unbuttons her bright yellow onesie and his mouth twists into a frown when her crying resumes. Her nappy isn’t notably damp, unusual as it’s the morning, which further means it’s not the reason she’s upset. His heart sinks; he desperately doesn’t want it to be something serious. Phil rubs his index finger up and down the length of her arm while cooing and shushing her. He replaces the essentially clean nappy with a new one regardless and proceeds to dress her in a different outfit.

A light pink onesie with mismatching blue and purple socks. Dan will gripe at him later for it but undoubtedly give up when he realizes how cute she is, Phil thinks to himself. 

He swaddles her quickly with what he’s come to realize is her favorite baby blanket before walking back to the bedroom with her where Dan is now getting dressed.

“No luck?” he asks, drawing his lower lip between his teeth as he smooths his shirt out.

It’s evident by the wailing coming from Emma that Phil hasn’t had any luck, but he’s too anxious to be snide. Instead, he just shakes his head.

Piercing crying. Then stillness. Then another piercing cry. She repeats this for what feels like ages but is actually only a few minutes. Stillness; movement; silence; noise.

“Want me to—” Dan starts but is abruptly stopped when the sound returns.

It’s undeniably a cough this time. Phil feels it as her body contracts and heaves in his arms. Hears it in the way she wheezes with it. It’s over as fast as it starts, but his grasp on her tightens purely out of instinct and he and Dan exchange a disconcerted look with one another before Phil’s eyes flicker down to his baby.

Her tiny face is scrunched up in a way that can only be interpreted as being in pain and she has big fat tears welling in her eyes. Phil’s heart twists and races in his chest.

“That was coughing,” Dan utters, and his breath hitches before he continues speaking.“What… what do we do?” 

“I… uh,” Phil scrambles. “Can you hold her so I can ring my mum?”

Dan nods and Phil passes Emma to him, her little body still swaddled in the blanket and her head now resting in the crook of Dan’s arms. Dan looks bloody terrified—like a deer caught in a car’s headlights. 

He looks exactly how Phil feels. 

Phil exits the bedroom and heads for the lounge as he thumbs through his contacts to call his mother. He paces back and forth and the call goes to voicemail but he immediately redials her number.

“Yes, child?” her sing-songy voice blares through the phone speaker. If pure terror wasn’t overriding his other emotions, it’d likely be a soothing thing. 

“Emma’s sick,” Phil sniffles.

There’s a drawn out silence before Kathryn responds, “What kind of sick?”

“Coughing kind of sick. And she’s not eating,” Phil croaks. “When I checked her nappy it was dry. She won’t stop crying and I don’t know what to do.” 

He hears Dan’s footsteps getting closer and moves to another room to keep talking. He loves and trusts Dan, of course, but he can’t risk panicking him more.

“Alright, check her temperature first,” Kathryn finally says. “If she has a fever, I want you to take her right to the hospital.”

The tears that were welling in his eyes finally fall when he asks, “And if she doesn’t?”

“Then I want you to run a hot shower and sit in the bathroom with her in your lap. The steam will loosen her up. I did that with you when you got sick as a baby and it helped, but have Dan call her pediatrician anyway.”

“Mum,” Phil breathes and wipes at his face with his free hand. “I’m scared.”

“I know,” she responds with an exhale. “I was too the first time you lot would get sick, but it’s going to be alright love. Keep me posted.” 

He thanks her and tells her goodbye and when he’s back in the lounge, Dan is perched on the couch with Emma nestled in his arms. She’s not crying anymore, and he attempts to regard that as a positive, but it doesn’t really work.

He shoots Dan a quick doleful look before he starts up the stairs in search of a baby thermometer. Surely there must be one tucked away in the slew of baby shower gifts they haven’t got around to unpacking quite yet.

When he finally manages to find one, his heart leaps a bit. He practically sprints down the stairs, urgent to figure out and mend whatever happens to be wrong with his baby.

“Shh, she’s asleep,” Dan says barely above a whisper when he hears Phil scuttling back into the room.

“Well she’s gonna have to wake up anyway,” Phil rushes to say. “I need to take her temperature.”

“Fuck,” Dan’s voice cracks. “I just got her down.”

He must’ve been crying ever since Phil was on the phone on account of the trails of tears that litter his cheeks. All Phil can do is press a chaste kiss to his temple and wipe his tears hastily away with his thumb; a gentle reminder that he’s here, that they’re in this together. 

Dan sniffles and slowly unswaddles Emma from her blanket but keeps it loosely around her body. He bounces her and rubs her arms and legs with the back of his index finger in an attempt to wake her and she stirs for a moment before she’s fully up. 

The whimpering is immediate. It makes both of them feel like shit. She must’ve finally got some relief through being asleep, and they’re the ones that forced her out of it. 

Phil takes a few moments to understand exactly how the baby thermometer works before he presses a button and swipes it across her tiny forehead. She kicks her feet angrily against Dan’s arm and he hurries to bounce and shush her.

“38.4? No, that can’t be—”

Phil smacks the thermometer against his hand like doing that will make it change. He swipes it across her forehead again, but of course, it reads the same temperature. 

“Still 38.4,” Phil chokes out.

“Fuck,” Dan says under his breath. “Fuck, fuck fuck. What do we do now?”

Phil releases his grip on the thermometer and lets it fall carelessly to the ground, almost as if it personally hurt him, and then he buries his face in his hands. He doesn’t want to say it. He doesn’t want it to be real and he definitely doesn’t want to see the expression on Dan’s face when he confirms their fears.

Instead, he mumbles into his hands, “We call the pediatrician.”

He’s scared, decidedly so, but he hates hospitals and he _will_ go out of his way to avoid them. He thinks that maybe the pediatrician will provide him with a simpler, less panic-inducing solution. It’s worth a shot, at the very least.

“Is that what your mum said to do?” 

Dan’s voice is so small. He looks impossibly younger than he is; clearly scared shitless.

Phil is too. He nods a white lie, biting his lips and rubbing his thumb gently across his crying baby’s forehead. It’s not going to hurt Dan if he doesn’t know that his mother said to go straight to the hospital. It’s not like she’s a doctor, anyway.

“I’ll do it,” Phil rushes to say, already skimming through his contacts.

To a certain degree, Emma calms down by the time Phil gets through to their doctor. A clear by-product of Dan’s continuous soft cooing and bouncing.

“And how much has she eaten in the past 12 hours?” asks the woman on the other end of the phone.

“Uh…” Phil stammers. 

He waffles back and forth with the pediatrician and Dan winces with every word Phil says like he’s done something wrong; like they, together, have completely failed at being parents. Like they’ve put their infant daughter in harm's way without even thinking about it.

“No, I tried,” Phil responds to some unheard question that snaps Dan out of his personal pity party before he continues, “Okay, okay thank you.”

Dan is still bouncing Emma lightly in his arms. She’s managed to fall back asleep with one of her tiny hands wrapped around Dan’s index fingers. She may not be crying anymore, but he is. His worst nightmare is unfolding before him and no amount of pinching himself will pull him out of it.

“Need to pack a bag and get the car ready,” Phil finally says to him when he’s off the phone. “We’re going to the hospital. Can you text my mum and let her know?”

Dan nods and blinks and more tears fall down his cheeks. He rubs his cheek against his shoulder and leans forward to retrieve his phone from the coffee table. Phil’s already left the room by the time the message is sent and he texts his own mother the same message for good measure.

_emma has a fever so we are taking her to hospital, we will keep you updated_

Dan can hear him rummaging through the nursery and he’s back in the lounge with a bag and an extra blanket slung over his shoulder almost as suddenly as he left.

“You sure you have everything?” 

“Yep,” Phil answers breathlessly. “Gonna put her car seat in the car and then we can leave.”

“And we can’t go to the pediatrician, because…?”

“Because the office doesn’t open until 10, Dan,” Phil snaps. He doesn’t mean for it to come out as harsh as it does. “And Emma is sick. Her doctor wants us to go to a children’s hospital where there’s a pediatrician she can see now.”

All the color drains from Dan’s face, like a child who got caught stealings biscuits out of a jar when they thought no one was looking. His stomach twists, and he can taste bile that’s creeping into his throat.

He stands up and wordlessly passes Emma to Phil, and then runs into the closest bathroom and dry heaves over the toilet. Nothing actually wants to come up, so he washes his hands and splashes cold water against his face. He needs to get it together; if not for himself, at least for his daughter.

Both Phil and Emma are no longer in the house when he finally exits the bathroom. He can hear the engine of their car rumbling in the garage, and he realizes Phil’s managed to get the car packed and ready in the time it took Dan to pull himself together. 

Guilt slinks into his bones but he manages to shove it down somewhere deep and dark. For now, at least.

*

The ride to the hospital is mostly uneventful. Phil chose to drive, as it was obvious that he was the more composed one between them, so Dan sat in the backseat with Emma where she slept soundly in her car seat. They brought a bottle of formula with them in case she wanted to eat, and he did attempt to feed her but decided to let her rest when she fought against it yet again.

When they arrive at the hospital, the person sat at the front desk guides them over to check in.

“Alright, which one of you is Dad?” asks a lady typing furiously at the keyboard in front of her. 

After an awkward look is shared between the three of them, Dan pipes up and says, “The both of us.”

“Ah, okay. Right. Sorry,” the woman rushes to say, regret written all over her face for not realizing it sooner. Phil turns to Dan and flashes him a taut smile before continuing to get them registered.

They find empty seats in the waiting room that’s littered with various children’s toys and tiny chairs for tinier humans. Small excitement blossoms in Phil’s chest when he envisions Emma getting older and how much he’s going to spoil her with whatever playthings her little heart fancies. 

Because she’s going to be okay. And she is going to get older. He will not let his brain run-away with anxiety that tries to convince him otherwise.

Emma only stirs when a mother with a crying baby enters the waiting room and she swiftly rivals the crying herself. Dan chuckles to himself purely out of exasperation. Finding amusement in how the two babies can recognize and try to out-do each other’s discomfort is the only way he can prevent himself from having a breakdown smack dab on the hospital floor. 

Phil reaches down and unbuckles Emma from her car seat and then lifts her to cradle in his arms. He rocks and bounces her for a few moments before Dan speedily plonks a pacifier in her mouth and she eventually relaxes into Phil’s arms.

“Pretty girl,” Dan quietly coos and Emma’s eyes widen as she kicks her legs excitedly at his voice. “You are! You’re my pretty girl!”

Phil smiles, which makes Dan smile too, so he resumes baby-talking to Emma. Maybe he looks a bit silly doing this in a public setting, but he assuredly does not give a flying fuck today. Not when it eases the discomfort from his two favorite people.

Before they know it, Emma’s name is being called and they’re being accompanied down a long hallway and into a consulting room. The room has a stark white crib smack dab in the middle, and the walls in the room are painted pastel blue and have stickers of various animals plastered all over. There’s one blue chair on the far end of the room, and a pink one near the side of the crib. Dan struggles to not mock the heteronormativity of all of it.

The nurse removes Emma from Phil’s arms to lay her in the crib, and when she starts crying the nurse swaddles her tightly with a blanket and puts the pacifier back in her mouth and that seems to do the trick. She bustles around the room and manages to get Emma’s vitals and details of her symptoms before she’s out of the room as quickly as she entered it. 

Dan is the first to move and take a seat in the blue chair, and briefly, his mind spirals with the thought of all the other sick babies that have been in this room. He doesn’t want to think about it; he _really_ doesn’t want his mind to bother him with such depressing concepts, but, his brain has never cared what he wants or doesn’t want.

“Dan?” Phil asks from the side of the crib, effectively removing Dan from his thoughts.

“Hmm?” he mutters back, shifting his eyes so they meet Phil’s.

Phil gives Emma a quick once-over before stepping over to stand in front of Dan where he is sitting. His arms are folded to his chest and a crease forms between his eyebrows. He’s convinced that Phil is about to yell at him right here in the hospital room in front of their tiny infant daughter and maybe even the doctor if they so happen to walk in right now.

Instead, he drops to his knees. 

He buries his head in Dan’s thighs and cries into his black sweatpants. Dan’s hands immediately find their way into Phil’s hair and comb their way through it. There are no words he can say in this moment that’ll change the situation or make him feel any better; if anything, he feels like doing exactly the same thing. He’s having a hard time being strong for himself, let alone another person. Rather, he involuntarily starts shushing Phil the same way he’s been doing to their daughter all morning. He doesn’t even notice that he’s doing until Phil’s crying turns into chuckling and he lifts his head up and moves to press a big wet kiss to Dan’s mouth. 

He matches it fervently. Built up emotions laced between the soft clashing of their mouths. It doesn’t fix anything, but it certainly doesn’t hurt anything either. 

“I hate this,” Phil says while he stands up. He leans down and brushes Dan’s jaw with the palm of his hand.

“Me too,” Dan says and then he juts his lip out. “But it’ll be alright, yeah?”

Phil nods and then rubs at Dan’s hands that are gripping the sides of the chair so tightly that all the blood has completely left his knuckles. He didn’t even notice he was doing it; using the chair as some sort of tether to safety. He releases his grip on the chair and instead clutches a fistful of Phil’s shirt to draw him in closer.

“I’m sorry,” Dan whispers. “About earlier. I shouldn’t have—”

Phil cups Dan’s face in his hands and cuts him off saying, “It’s fine, you’re fine. I’m not angry. I love you.”

Tears are rubbed away as instantly as they fall and his pink cheeks are kissed with such tenderness that more tears dare to escape.

*

Time moves by agonizingly slow as if it’s a sentient thing and its mocking them. A doctor comes in an hour after the nurse had left and goes through the rounds of checking Emma’s vitals and symptoms to conclude what specifically is wrong and Phil thinks he might explode if he has to repeat himself once more.

When a provider comes in the room to take a blood test, all three of them—Dan, Phil, and their little baby—cry. Emma’s hand squeezes around one of Phil’s fingers with such an unwillingness to let go that his heart leaps in his chest.

Dan sends a rushed text to his mother, and then the same one to Phil’s mother. 

_got bloodwork done, still waiting :(_

The same nurse from earlier administers fluids through a strange looking bottle after finishing some nasal spray and suctioning Emma’s nose that she truly, truly hates. Dan would never imagine that’d it’d be so painful to watch their child get care and attention that will ultimately make her feel better, but it does. Her discomfort turns into his discomfort. He imagines it will always be that way.

It turns out that she has a common cold. The doctor said something about how it’s normal and it’s part of strengthening their immune system but Phil pretty much tuned him out after he said she would be fine. Dan updates the both of their families quickly.

They take turns sitting in the chair next to the crib and attempting to console her through everything, and for the most part, the treatments work. She’s not crying and whimpering nearly as much as she was in the early hours of the day, and she responds more when they talk and coo at her. 

She eats, she poops, she burps, and she even laughs. She garbles at them and kicks her feet, this time out of happiness, and the both of them smile so wide that it’s bound to hurt their cheeks.

The doctor sends them home after five long hours with instructions to give her extra fluids and suction at her nose periodically until the virus works its way out of her system. He also tells them to follow up soon with her pediatrician and not to stress themselves too much. 

They’re both not sure how much they’ll be able to follow that last rule and smile at each other when the doctor says it. So, maybe they’re not as good at hiding their emotions as they previously thought. Maybe that’s okay.

Dan drives them home and Phil calls his mother while situated in the backseat with Emma. Dan’s eyes periodically flick to the rearview mirror to watch them both with an affection that makes his chest erupt with a familiar warmth. He loves his little family that he’s grown on his own and he’s elated that nothing is taking that away from him.

When they arrive home, Emma is situated in a bouncy chair and babbles gibberish and other random noises before she spits and throws her hands up excitedly when she sees Phil enter the room. 

“Is someone feeling better?” Phil baby-talks as he walks over to her, a bottle of warm milk in tow. “I think she is!”

She giggles back at him, and he smiles, and Dan beams before slipping soundly out of the room.

*

They spend the rest of the day taking extra special care of her, which to be fair is much like any other day, just with a little more fussiness coming from Emma. Dan will have to wash so many snot-wet washcloths and hand-wash way too many baby bottles tomorrow, and he doesn’t mind in the slightest bit. She can be as fussy as she wants today, tomorrow, and the next day for all he cares. As long as she’s healthy.

All of them are dead tired before the sun has an opportunity to set. They’re _such_ first-time parents to an infant.

Phil spends half an hour rocking her to sleep, singing quiet lullabies under his breath once her eyes are lulled shut and her body relaxes in his arms.

Dan is the first to climb into bed once Emma is assuredly sound asleep in her bassinet.

Phil is still sat in the rocking chair, wiping spit up off his shirt with a rag he snagged earlier from the nursery when Dan’s voice is low and gentle as he says, “Come to bed, dear.” 

Phil smiles briefly before crossing the room and lifting the duvet to crawl underneath it with him. It’s warm, and it’s safe. It’s his home. He rolls onto his side to face Dan and then tucks his head into Dan’s neck. 

He smells good, like the expensive shower gel they only use every once in a while when they’re spoiling themselves and indulging. He must’ve showered earlier when Phil was too busy to pay attention. He presses his lips to the soft skin there and then moves back a little so he can see Dan’s face.

“Love you, ‘mproud of you,” he says, wriggling impossibly closer to let his head rest against Dan’s chest. 

Dan presses a quick kiss to his forehead and tightens his grip around Phil’s middle before they both drift off to a much-deserved sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> apparently all i can write is hurt/comfort, but i hope you enjoyed anyway! i post my fics @philseye :)


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